By Javid Husain | Published: October 27, 2009<!-- Last
Updated: Monday, 25 February 2008, 12:35 GMT-->
If there is one issue which will determine the future course of
the 21st century, it is the direction and substance of US-China
relations in the coming decades. The driving factors behind
this relationship are twofold: the US determination to prevent the
emergence of a power in any part of the world capable of
challenging its global supremacy and the phenomenal economic growth
of China over the past three decades which in due course would
translate itself in the growth and strength of its military
power.
The combined effect of China’s huge size and rapid growth makes
it inevitable that the world would, at first, see increasing
rivalry between the two nations in the economic field followed by a
challenge to the US global supremacy in the military field by China
in the second half of the 21st century. Of course, this conclusion
is based on the bold assumption that the present trends of growth
in the economic power of the two nations are sustained in the
coming decades. These developments would transform the global
geopolitical scene with far-reaching strategic, political and
economic implications for the whole world.
There is no
denying the fact that the current world order has been shaped
primarily by the West under the leadership of the US - a reflection
of the Western countries’ domination of the global political and
economic scene since the end of the World War
II.
The structure, the procedures and the functioning of the United
Nations, particularly the Security Council, the World Bank and the
IMF, established after the World War II, were such that no major
decision could be taken without the backing of the West. The
position has remained more or less unchanged since then. This state
of affairs is going to change dramatically in the coming decades
reflecting the redistribution of the economic and ultimately the
military power globally.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union did pose a challenge to
the military supremacy of the West. The defeat and disintegration
of the Soviet Union made the world unipolar briefly with the US
emerging as the global hegemon.
However, the rapid growth of China and other powers like India
and Brazil, the re-assertiveness of Russia, and the emergence of
other power centres such as the European Union, Japan and the ASEAN
indicate that the US unipolar moment has already passed.
The world is increasingly turning multipolar with several
centres of power emerging on the scene even though for the time
being the US is the only country capable of projecting its military
power in the different corners of the world. It is inevitable that
these developments would ultimately lead to the re-writing of the
rules which determine the way in which the world functions in the
political and economic fields.
China’s rapidly growing economic and military strength would
make it a major player in this process of global transformation. An
example of the kind of changes that can be expected in the coming
decades was the call by the Governor of China’s Central Bank, Zhou
Xiaochuan, in March 2009 for the replacement of the dollar as the
world’s reserve currency by Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s).
Changes can, thus, be expected in the structure and functioning
of multilateral institutions like the UN Security Council, the
World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.
The net effect
of these changes would be the gradual decline in the influence of
the US and the West and increase in the role of China and other
emerging powers.
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